tutorials

Posted on by Paisit Wongsongsarn - 7 Comments on SONOFF ZBM5 Review – A 3-gang Zigbee Smart Wall Switch tested with eWeLink and Home Assistant

SONOFF ZBM5 Review – A 3-gang Zigbee Smart Wall Switch tested with eWeLink and Home Assistant

Sonoff ZBM5 review

We will be reviewing a smart home device from SONOFF that we recently received right after the New Year, the SONOFF SwitchMan Zigbee Smart Wall (ZBM5). This is SONOFF’s first Zigbee-enabled Smart Wall Switch. In addition to functioning as a smart wall switch, it can also act as a Zigbee Router, making it easier to expand your Zigbee network at home in one shot. One of the key features of the SONOFF ZBM5 is that it can either operate in with-neutral (N) or without-neutral (N) wiring setups. Typically, in the market, we see these as separate models: one for with-neutral and another for without-neutral. This feature adds more flexibility for users, especially those with wiring constraints in their homes. Let’s dive into the details. SONOFF ZBM5 Unboxing Inside the box, you’ll find a user manual, wall plugs, and the switch itself. The model we received has a rectangular shape (120mm) […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 36 Comments on Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks

Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks

Radxa Orion O6 Review Debian 12

Radxa sent me a sample of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard for review. The system is powered by an CIX P1 (CD8180) 12-core Armv9 processor, equipped with 16GB RAM, and offers features like 5GbE, HDMI and DisplayPort, a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot, and more. It’s one of the most anticipated boards of the first part of 2025 since it’s powerful, offers a good performance/value ratio, and eventually promises to boot any ISO Arm64 image through an open-source BIOS / EDKII bootloader. I’ll start this review with an unboxing, NVMe SSD and WiFi module installation, and a short tutorial showing how to install Debian 12 operating systems before getting some system information and running a few benchmarks. In a few weeks, I’ll publish a more detailed review with features testing and more benchmarks to see what works and what doesn’t at this very early stage. Radxa Orion O6 unboxing I received […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Disabling VT-d improves Intel Arc GPU Linux performance on Meteor Lake and newer SoCs

Disabling VT-d improves Intel Arc GPU Linux performance on Meteor Lake and newer SoCs

Improve Intel Arc GPU performance Linux VT-d disabled

In this post, I’ll check whether disabling VT-d virtualization support may improve the performance of the Intel Arc GPU in recent Meteor Lake or Lunar Lake SoC using a Khadas Mind Maker Kit with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU with Intel Arc 140V graphics running Ubuntu 24.10. A few days ago, I read a post on Phoronix about Intel publishing tips to improve the performance of Intel GPUs in Linux: Keep the system updated with the latest kernel and Mesa versions. Ensure SoC firmware is up-to-date. These firmware updates currently require installing the Windows graphics driver; firmware updates via fwupd are in progress. Use Wayland where possible, as it supports additional modifiers for better performance. For MTL (Meteor Lake) and newer integrated GPUs, disable VT-d if virtualization is not needed. For discrete GPUs: Enable ReBAR_ Enable ASPM_ I was especially curious about the line about disabling VT-d virtualization […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Review of SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for BBC Micro:bit

Review of SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for BBC Micro:bit

Smarthon Smart City IoT Starter Kit review

SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for micro:bit is an educational kit for 10+ years old teaching basic projects from turning an LED to more complex projects with multiple sensors, IFTTT integration, and mobile app development. The company sent us a sample of the Start Kit along with a BBC Micro:bit board for review, and we’ll report our experience with the kit in this review. Unboxing of SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for micro:bit The package I received includes the SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for Micro:bit and a BBC Micro:bit V2 board since it’s not included in the starter kit. The bottom side of the package lists the main components and features a QR code pointing to the product page. The package includes cardboard and wooden models, various cables, a 180° servo, a screw set, a city map, the Smarthon IoT:bit carrier board for the BBC Micro:bit, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Raspberry Pi CM5 review with different cooling solutions (and camera tribulations)

Raspberry Pi CM5 review with different cooling solutions (and camera tribulations)

Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board cooling heatsink active cooler

The day of Raspberry Pi CM5 release, I published a mini review of the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5 showing how to assemble the kit and boot Raspberry Pi OS, and I also ran sbc-bench benchmark to evaluate the performance. Sadly, the Broadcom BCM2712 CPU did throttle during the test meaning cooling was not optimal when the CM5 IO board was inside the IO Case and the Compute Module 5 was only cooled by the fan. So today, I’ll repeat the same test with other cooling solutions namely the official Raspberry Pi Cooler for CM5 (that’s a heatsink only),  and EDATEC’s CM5 active cooler similar to the active cooler for the Raspberry Pi 5, but designed for the CPU module. But before that, I’ll do some house cleaning so to speak since last time, I booted Raspberry Pi OS from an NVMe SSD and I noticed the camera did […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on iKOOLCORE R2 Max review – Part 2: 10GbE on an Intel N100 mini PC with OpenWrt (QWRT), Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 24.04 and pfSense 2.7.2

iKOOLCORE R2 Max review – Part 2: 10GbE on an Intel N100 mini PC with OpenWrt (QWRT), Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 24.04 and pfSense 2.7.2

iKOOLCORE R2 Max Review Proxmox VE Ubuntu 22.04

I’ve already checked out iKOOLCORE R2 Max hardware in the first part of the review with an unboxing and a teardown of the Intel N100 system with two 10GbE ports and two 2.5GbE ports. I’ve now had more time to test it with an OpenWrt fork, Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 24.04, and pfSense, so I’ll report my experience in the second and final part of the review. As a reminder, since I didn’t have any 10GbE gear so far, iKOOLCORE sent me two R2 Max devices, a fanless model and an actively-cooled model. I was told the fanless one was based on Intel N100 SoC, and the actively-cooled one was powered by an Intel Core i3-N305 CPU, but I ended up with two Intel N100 devices. The fanless model will be an OpenWrt 23.05 (QWRT) server, and the actively cooled variant be the device under test/client with Proxmox VE 8.3 server […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on How to use iperf3 in multi-thread mode for 10Gps+ Ethernet testing

How to use iperf3 in multi-thread mode for 10Gps+ Ethernet testing

iperf3 10GbE multi thread test

With 10GbE becoming more widespread and often found in entry-level hardware, the CPU may become the bottleneck, so I’ll explain how to use iperf3 in multi-thread mode to fully saturate the 10GbE bandwidth even with a system based on a relatively low-end multi-core processor.

For this tutorial, I use two iKOOCORE R2 Max mini PCs with two 10GbE interfaces each and an Intel N100 quad-core processor running an OpenWrt fork (QWRT) and Proxmox VE (Debian) respectively. I will show how I can fully saturate the 10GbE interfaces using multithreading, but not with a typical iperf3 single-core test.

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Arduino Core for Zephyr beta released – Let’s give it a try!

Arduino Core for Zephyr beta released – Let’s give it a try!

Arduino Zephyr Boards llext

Last July, Arduino announced plans to switch from the soon-to-be deprecated Arm Mbed to Zephyr RTOS, and the company has now outed the first beta release of “Arduino Core for Zephyr OS” for a range of boards. From the user’s perspective, this should not change anything. However, there are massive changes under the hood and Arduino sketches are built and executed differently with the Arduino Core for Zephyr.  Some highlights of the new Zephyr-based Arduino core implementation include: Dynamic sketch loading – Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware. Zephyr subsystems support threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling. Fast compiling and smaller binaries since a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary. You can get started straightaway with the code and instructions on GitHub. You’ll need Arduino 2.x.x for this to work. […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC